Schizophrenia and Associated Indications – Small but Diverse Range of First-in-Class Molecular Targets Hold Promise for Treatment of Negative and Cognitive Symptoms

The pipeline for schizophrenia is small, given the large patient population and relatively well-defined unmet needs, with a total of 134 products in active development. This is indicative of a low level of R&D funding and investment in schizophrenia, most likely due to a poor understanding of the underlying disease mechanisms, which acts as a strong barrier to the development of effective pharmaceutical products.

As in the market, the overwhelming majority of these products are small molecules. However, there is a small but notable proportion of the pipeline that consists of other molecule types, such as monoclonal Antibodies (mAbs), cell therapies, proteins and vaccines, none of which are currently present in the schizophrenia market. Of the 134 products in the schizophrenia pipeline, 17 are first-in-class, meaning they act on molecular targets not yet present in any market in the pharmaceutical industry. This equates to just 15% of pipeline products for which there is a disclosed molecular target. These first-in-class pipeline products act on 12 distinct first-in-class molecular targets.

This is a very low level of innovation relative to other indications in the pharmaceutical industry. For example, the Parkinson’s disease pipeline contains 365 products, of which 43% have a disclosed molecular target that is first-in-class. The trend is even more pronounced when compared to indications outside of Central Nervous System (CNS) diseases. For example, breast cancer has 1,050 products in active development, of which 41% have a disclosed molecular target that is first-in-class. Although some of the first-in-class programs in development have shown some promise in Preclinical studies, there are no particularly promising first-in-class products in the pipeline.